TEMPORARY OR PARTIAL OFFLOADING OF MOBILE APPLICATION FUNCTIONS TO A CLOUD-BASED ENVIRONMENT

• US 20140310709A1
• Filed: 04/15/2014
• Published: 10/16/2014
• Est. Priority Date: 04/15/2013
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Seven Networks LLC (SoftBank Group Corp.)
• Original Assignee: Seven Networks Inc
• Inventors: Nirantar, Abhay
• Granted Patent: US 9,830,191 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 718/1
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2209/509 Offload
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/485 Task life-cycle, e.g. stopping, restarting, resuming execution G06F9/4881 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/5027 the resource being a machine, e.g. CPUs, Servers, Terminals
• CPC Class Codes: Y02D 10/00 Energy efficient computing, e.g. low power processors, power management or thermal management

Abstract

Techniques for temporarily and/or partially offloading mobile applications to one or more remote virtual machines in a server include establishing an application copy of a mobile application installed on a mobile device at a remote virtual machine, suspending the mobile application on the mobile device and offloading operations of the mobile application to the application copy at the remote virtual machine for a period of time. Suspending the mobile application and offloading its operations to the remote virtual machine for the period of time reduces consumption of resources on the mobile device. The virtual machine executes the application copy in the same manner the mobile device would execute the mobile application and transfers data from the execution to the mobile application at the end of the period of time to allow the mobile application to update itself and resume its operation without any loss of data or functionality.

Claims

1. A method of offloading operations of a mobile application, comprising:

establishing an application copy of a mobile application installed on a mobile device at a remote virtual machine;

suspending the mobile application on the mobile device; and

offloading operations of the mobile application to the application copy at the remote virtual machine for a period of time.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein suspending the mobile application and offloading the operations of the mobile application to the remote virtual machine for the period of time reduces consumption of resources by the mobile application on the mobile device.

3. The method of claim 2, wherein offloading the operations of the mobile application to the application copy at the remote virtual machine for the period of time reduces consumption of at least two of power, data, memory or CPU resources by the mobile application on the mobile device.

4. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

receiving data generated or obtained by the application copy during the period of time the operations of the mobile application was offloaded to the application copy; and

updating the mobile application with the received data.

5. The method of claim 4, further comprising:

resuming the mobile application on the mobile device upon updating the mobile application with the received data, wherein the received data includes new or changed data.

6. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

determining the period of time during which the operations of the mobile application are offloaded to the application copy at the remote virtual machine based on at least one of;

user instructions, user activity patterns or a state of the mobile application.

7. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

selecting the mobile application from a plurality of mobile applications on the mobile device for offloading based on user instructions.

8. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

tracking resource consumption by a plurality of mobile applications on the mobile device; and

selecting the mobile application for offloading based on the resource consumption that is tracked.

9. The method of claim 1, wherein establishing the application copy of the mobile application on the mobile device at the remote virtual machine includes transferring application data associated with the mobile application to the remote virtual machine to facilitate the application copy to be executed on the remote virtual machine in the same manner the mobile application would be executed on the mobile device.

10. The method of claim 1, wherein the application copy is executed at the remote virtual machine to perform the operations of the mobile application, wherein the operations include communicating with an application server associated with the mobile application to obtain new or changed data.

11. The method of claim 1, wherein multiple mobile applications on the mobile device have application copies established at a server hosting multiple remote virtual machines including the remote virtual machine.

12. The method of claim 4, wherein the received data including new or changed data for updating the mobile application and data that is transferred to the remote virtual machine to establish the application copy are compressed to reduce network bandwidth consumption.

13. A mobile device, comprising:

a memory;

a processor disposed in communication with the memory and configured to execute a plurality of instructions stored in the memory to;

transfer configuration data corresponding to a mobile application on the mobile device to a remote server to establish a proxy of the mobile application on a virtual machine hosted by the remote server;

suspend the mobile application on the mobile device; and

offload operations of the mobile application to the proxy of the mobile application at the virtual machine for a period of time.

14. The mobile device of claim 13, wherein timing for suspending the mobile application and offloading operations of the mobile application is determined based on user instructions, availability of resources on the mobile device, state of the mobile application or a combination thereof

15. The mobile device of claim 13, further configured to:

receive application data corresponding to the operations of the mobile application performed by the proxy of the mobile application from the virtual machine;

update the mobile application on the mobile device using the received application data; and

resume the mobile application following the update.

16. A system, comprising:

a remote server hosting a virtual machine configured to;

receive configuration data to establish a copy of a mobile application installed on a mobile device;

in response to receiving instructions, execute the copy of the mobile application for a period of time in the same manner as the mobile device would execute the mobile application;

aggregate new or changed data from executing the copy of the mobile application; and

at the end of the period of time, transfer the new or changed data that are aggregated to the mobile application on the mobile device.

17. The system of claim 16, wherein the mobile application remains in a paused state during the period of time to reduce consumption of resources by the mobile application on the mobile device.

18. The system of claim 17, wherein the new or changed data that is transferred to the mobile application at the end of the period of time updates the mobile application and causes the mobile application exit the paused state and resume normal operation.

19. The system of claim 16, wherein the virtual machine is one of multiple virtual machines hosted by the remote server, the multiple virtual machines configured to execute copies of mobile applications installed on multiple mobile devices.

20. The system of claim 16, wherein the period of time is included in the instructions and is determined based on user behavior, user settings or a state of the mobile application.